The door of the apartment at this moment opened, and Anne of Austria, filled with her own peculiar superstition, stopped in the midst of her speech and turned her eye anxiously towards it, as if she expected the coming of some ghastly apparition. The figure that entered, however, though it possessed a dignity scarcely earthly, and a calm still grace—an almost inanimate composure, rarely seen in beings agitated by human passions, was, nevertheless, no form calculated to inspire alarm.
“Oh, Mademoiselle de Hauteford!” cried the Queen, her face brightening as she spoke, “De Beaumont, you will love her, for that she is one of my firmest friends.”
At the name of De Hauteford, Pauline drew up her slight elegant figure to its full height, with a wild start, like a deer suddenly frightened by some distant sound, and drawing her hand across her forehead, brushed back the two or three dark curls which had again fallen over her clear fair brow.
“De Hauteford!” cried Anne of Austria as the young lady advanced, “what has happened? You look pale—some evil is abroad.”
“I would not have intruded on your Majesty, or on these ladies,” said Mademoiselle de Hauteford with a graceful but cold inclination of the head towards the strangers, “had it not been that Monsieur Seguin, your Majesty’s Surgeon, requests the favour of an audience immediately. Nor does he wish to be seen by the common attendants; in truth, he has followed me to the antechamber, where he waits your Majesty’s pleasure.”
“Admit him, admit him!” cried the Queen. “What can he want at this hour?”
The surgeon was instantly brought into the presence of the Queen by Mademoiselle de Hauteford; but, after approaching his royal mistress with a profound bow, he remained in silence glancing his eye towards the strangers who stood in the apartment, in such a manner as to intimate that his communication required to be made in private.
“Speak, speak, Seguin!” cried the Queen, translating his look and answering it at once; “these are all friends, old and dear friends.”
“If such be your Majesty’s pleasure,” replied the Surgeon, with that sort of short dry voice, which generally denotes a man of few words. “I must inform you at once, that young Count de Blenau has been this morning attacked by robbers, while hunting in the forest, and is severely hurt.”
While Seguin communicated this intelligence, Pauline (she scarce knew why) fixed her eye upon Mademoiselle de Hauteford, whose clear pale cheek, ever almost of the hue of alabaster, showed that it could become still paler. The Queen too, though the rouge she wore concealed any change of complexion, appeared manifestly agitated. “I told you so, De Beaumont,” she exclaimed—“that blood foreboded evil: I never knew the sign to fail. This is bad news truly, Seguin,” she continued. “Poor De Blenau! surely he will not die.”